


Afterlife

by Trell (orphan_account)



Category: Mass Effect, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Club Afterlife, First Meetings, M/M, Mass Effect/Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 14:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Trell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mass Effect/Supernatural fusion AU: Dean is a mercenary working out of Omega, and Castiel is Aria T'Loak's stim-junkie lieutenant and legbreaker. This is the story of how they meet.</p><p> <i>Aria smiles at him—that same perfect, killer smile, the kind Dean imagines she gave the former owner of Afterlife just before she shot him through the skull and named herself the Pirate Queen of Omega.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Afterlife

Dean meets Castiel in Club Afterlife.

It's not surprising, really. Everyone who’s anyone can be found in Afterlife, along with the recruiters, and the girls, and the drinks. Afterlife is hot and loud and good and it smells of toxic alien drinks and sweat and sex, and Dean loves it, even if he’s usually only there looking for a job.

The mercenary groups of the Terminus Systems hire on freelancers often, usually for the more dangerous targets, so they don’t have to expend their own men trying to reach particularly suicidal goals. Other freelancers avoid job-hunting in Omega unless there’s no other option for exactly this reason, because caution is a gunslinger’s watchword, after all; but Dean revels in it, goes after the jobs that most other experienced freelancers won’t touch.

Inexperienced freelancers usually wind up dead, which certainly says something for their wisdom, but Dean is just smart and deadly enough to allow himself to be a daredevil.

Lately, Dean mostly throws his lot in with the Blue Suns, because they’re more his style, but he’s worked with Eclipse once or twice, too. The asari outfit is incredibly ruthless and equally efficient, and easily the best-organized out of the three that run Omega or any Dean has worked with in the past, but it doesn't quite suit his way doing things.

(The Blood Pack he avoids like asari avoid Ardat-Yakshi, because if there’s one thing Dean absolutely refuses to do, it's work with vorcha. The fact that the Blood Pack is the least fond of recruiting other races helps.)

Be that as it may: tonight Dean finds himself at Afterlife, as he often does, and tonight it's because he's received a stomach-churningly curt invitation from Aria T’Loak. Dean has met her exactly once before, as all new arrivals of note on Omega must. She’d been—impressive is the appropriate term, he supposes, though the one that had come to mind at the time had been _thoroughly terrifying_. She’d smiled at him, brilliantly (and sometimes it seems to Dean that all asari must be inherently beautiful, because he’s yet to meet one that isn’t easy on the eyes) but what he’d seen in her sparking eyes and perfect teeth were the bloodthirsty features of a predator.

So it is that he’s less than thrilled when the invitation arrives, and still less so as he climbs the steps to the club’s second floor. A dangerous-looking turian and a massive batarian tower over him as he reaches the top, and the batarian whips out a device, grunts, “Arms out.”

Dean complies, because it’s probably not a great idea to resist (he’d been on the lower floor when someone had refused to be scanned before entering Aria’s presence, once; the blood splatter had been memorable.) The batarian runs the scanner along his body and growls “He’s clean,” over his shoulder before letting him through.

Aria’s balcony is just as he remembers it, lavish. The asari herself is sprawled on the central couch, dressed in the latest fashion from Ilium, with raised shoulders and a wide double collar and gloves that go up past the elbow, a slim needler pistol at her thigh. Her posture is utterly decadent, legs crossed at the ankles, a glass of something blue and bubbling balancing in the fingers of her left hand, and—

—and right by her feet on the floor sits a slender man, and Aria’s other hand is carding through his black hair like he’s her own personal varren, only rather more aesthetically pleasing and slobbering significantly less.

And if he’s also fucking gorgeous, well, then Dean certainly can’t fault Aria’s taste in her pets.

“Dean Winchester.” Aria smiles at him—that same perfect, killer smile, the kind he imagines she gave the former owner of Afterlife just before she shot him through the skull and named herself the Pirate Queen of Omega. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Have you been enjoying your time on my station?”

“It’s been satisfactory,” Dean says, blandly. He doesn’t want to say more than he has to, not until she makes clear what she wants—or, at any rate, what she wants him to think she wants. “What do you want?”

“Quick to business. I like that.” Aria narrows her eyes, the side of her mouth curving upward. “Sit down, Winchester.” She motions to one of the couches across from her.

Sitting is awkward in his armor—Dean isn’t stupid enough to go anywhere in Omega without his gear, and anyway it’s a hell of a lot easier to land a job when you look the part—and Dean’s fairly certain that’s at least part of why Aria insists that he do it. He sits, anyway, carefully, the arsenal strapped to his back and sides jabbing into his back as he does. 

Aria takes a long sip from her glass, and Dean waits silently. His eyes are drawn to the man at her feet, who sits with his eyes closed and his head lolled blissfully back while Aria toys with his hair like someone less man-eating might stroke a cat. He is not, he tells himself, going to ask; definitely, _definitely_ not.

He glances back up to Aria as she finishes her drink. Her lips, he notices, leave a dark violet ring on the rim of her glass. “You’ve made a name for yourself here,” she says, fixing him with a stare. “Not many freelancers make it here on Omega. Certainly not ones with as much of a death wish as you seem to have.”

“No death wish, ma’am,” Dean states, refrains from resting his hand warily on his pistol. Being around Aria makes his skin crawl, and the two giants standing a few feet behind his back with loaded weapons aren’t helping. “Just a thing for adrenaline.” He gives her his best charmer smile, easy, like he’s not as tense as a tightly coiled spring.

Aria sees right through him, he thinks, by the way she smirks. “So I’ve been told. It so happens that I need a merc that isn’t afraid of a little—adrenaline.”

There’s a soft, rumbling laugh from below, and Dean realizes with a start that it comes from the man at Aria’s feet, looks at him. Glazed blue eyes meet his gaze. The man gives a languid smile, tells him, “The last one she gave this speech to was sent back vacuum-packed. In pieces.”

The man makes a noise of pain as Aria’s fingers suddenly tighten in his hair and harshly jerk his head back, effectively silencing him. “Ignore him,” she says. Her voice positively drips with pleasantness, and Dean suspects that it hides the kind of anger that makes people that displease her get very, very dead. “He’s not here to talk, though what he says is true. The last three mercenaries I sent on this job did not survive.”

“Which is why you called me,” Dean says, bluntly. “Because I have a record of coming back alive.”

“Precisely.” Aria sets her empty glass down on the low table between them, leans back against the cushions, arm cast up to rest behind her. “Whether or not you have a death wish, the target I have in mind is very good at granting them. To date, his people have decimated not only the three mercenaries I mentioned but also their squadrons, and, on one particularly memorable occasion, the entirety of the building they were in.” 

Dean feels his stomach sinking even as another part of him rejoices—the part that makes him charge head-first into firefights and take the kind of risks that other professionals balk at. “You want me to go after Archangel.”

“In a manner of speaking. I am not interested in taking down Archangel himself, nor would a single strike team be suited to the purpose.” Aria is running her fingers through the man’s hair again, and Dean has to make an effort not to look down to watch. He shakes himself inwardly and refocuses on her words: “One of his twelve top operatives, however, has been causing a significant amount of trouble for me and mine.” The fury that suddenly strikes through her tone is disturbing. “Omega is _mine_ , and I do not tolerate those who would dispute it.”

“Right,” Dean says. “Which operative is that, then, and how much are you going to be paying me?” He’s not certain he wants to sit here and bargain with Aria–he’s pretty sure he doesn’t, actually—but no self-respecting freelancer doesn’t try to drive up the price. “It better be good. I’ve got another offer already on the table, and it’s a whole lot less likely to get me killed than going after one of Archangel’s people.”

“His ‘intelligence officer’.” Aria leans forward, now, withdraws her right hand from the man on the floor and thumbs on her omni-tool. An image of a person forms above her upturned palm, the curved back and inverted knees showing them to be a salarian even though the projection is fuzzy, like the image was taken from one of the shit security cams in the lower levels. “Ledra. Extremely skilled with explosives and unparalleled in this system at breaking through encryptions and various other security measures.”

“He doesn’t sound like he’s so tough on his own. I take it there’s a catch.” Dean scowls. “And you still haven’t named the reward.”

“The catch is that I don’t want him dead. I want everyone around him dead, and him delivered to me. You will be provided with a team of others as—adrenaline-seeking as yourself, and the necessary resources. As to the reward,” and there’s that killer smile again, the one that makes Dean imagine back-alleys and blood in his mouth, “you bring him and his files to me, unharmed and untouched, respectively, and I make you rich enough to retire."

“Not interested in retiring.” Dean gives her a straight glare, because he’s played this game with enough employers to not fall for that. “How much? Name the number.”

Aria does, leaving him very nearly open-mouthed.

He could start up his own organization with that, he thinks. Hell, he _could_ retire, if that was what he wanted, though he suspects that he’s much more likely to go out guns blazing than relaxing on some sunny island.

“All right,” he says, finally. “You got a deal. Brief me, get me the men, and I’ll go in and get this Ledra guy.”

“Very good.” Aria vanishes her omni-tool with a twitch of her fingers, looking pleased. “The contract will arrive via your comm. Castiel will give you the details, and accompany you on the mission. Don't get him killed.”

“Castiel?” Dean says. A lieutenant, he imagines. Aria must have at least a dozen subordinates of her own, probably all different degrees of expendable. 

Aria glances down, and Dean follows her gaze.

From the floor, the blue-eyed man gives him a toothy grin, and Dean realizes, belatedly, that the glassy look in the man's eyes means he’s _high_. Then he realizes what Aria's pointed look means.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says.

That’s how Dean first meets Castiel.


End file.
